In one way I think it is great that people working on massive, effort-consuming projects have the option of earning themselves something. But I can also see this leading to a big range of commercial offers that either don't keep what they promise or overshadow the free mods in the long run, if the commercial efforts turn out to be successful. I don't see this as threat for mw modding, though. People generally don't seem to like the idea that much, so I wonder if that will fully take off at any point. In any case it may lead to some tension between the commercial guys and the other ones that keep doing their stuff for free.

For us the only thing that I would possibly consider, for the pure sake of progress and in a limited and well-defined scope, would be financially enabling a modder that does very crucial work (like say npcing and questing) to put one or two days of fulltime work per week into the project. But really, only as long as that would happen in full consensus with everyone else.

That said, I hope we'll never end up selling our work instead of putting it online for free. I want our mod to be played by as many people as possible.

Want to give some reasons as to why roerich? You can't just say its terrible and not give a single reason why.

I agree with you worsas. If people want to put a lot of time and effort into a mod and charge a small fee for it then that's fine. I don't think community based mods like this or TR should ever be paid mods, and I don't think they will ever be. But people would most definitely be allowed to sell their work.

I think the only real problem I can see with the whole deal is that the heartless bastards at valve are taking 75% of the cut...

On one side I understand how much work modding today's games is. There is usually just a little difference between modding work and proffesional work, it takes lot of time, energy and also requires some money put into more proffesional software or education.

On the other side money usually ruins everything (this reflects for example in the gaming industry, that moves more and more into mainstream production, making games less deep, more dumb, idiotic or completely stupid), it's hard to say how much impact will it have on the community. Only the large and popular mods will probably be monetized, which doesn't necessarily mean anything bad. Although there is this idea, that when Bethesda releases another a bit messed up game, you cannot simply fix it by adding mods, you have to fix it by investing more money into mods. This could also lead into pirating mods (and yes, this idea kinda sounds completely silly, perhaps one day we will be even charged for the time spent writing a post on a modding forum).

There are dozens more possible scenarios that will or will not happen, the time will show, but I am mostly skeptical.
Who knows, perhaps one day we could be really motivated into creating top tier AAA assets for PT, which will have the usual "99$ per download" price tag on it.

One thing I worry about is more copy protection. Paid mods are naturally going to lead to piracy, torrenting of expensive, high-quality mods and suchlike. The Steam Workshop will likely serve as a double-check to see if you've actually paid for the mods you're using, which might in turn lead to more restrictions on what we can and cannot mod: no .exe patches, no advanced graphical programs, Steam Workshop exclusivity, etc. Could get messy, especially in future games.

In practical terms, though, I don't think this will affect Morrowind modding overmuch. There's no Workshop for the game, and there's little money in it compared to the steady modding mill of the later games. Most likely, asking money for Morrowind mods will remain illegal, as it is now.

I mostly agree with what the lot of you already has said, especially Berandas. I can see the reasoning, but it just feels weird to me, to monetize on a hobby like this, and it seems greedy to want to earn money on modders work. If only the money went mostly to the modders, it would look slightly better. And the prospect of pirated mods.. Come on.

I tried to make a post earlier, not sure what happened to it. Signed up mainly because I wanted to discuss this issue on my old stomping grounds (or, well, the new version of my old stomping grounds anyway). I think they should have announced this at least two weeks in advance, use the first week to gather feedback and suggestions, use the second to implement them (longer if needed).
I really wish they would've given this whole thing more of a fighting chance, perhaps rather than nixing the whole thing they could've temporarily taken it offline as they re-assessed what to do with it. I saw so much potential in what this could mean for the future of modding and I don't think enough people were looking at the potential long-term benefits. It reminds me of when Google first started adding Google+ features to YouTube, only they had the opposite response. Rather than keeping things going and ironing out the most glaring problems, they're just dropping the whole idea-granted, "for now", but it seems unlikely that they'd do anything with Skyrim, not unless they aimed for a radially different approach-which could be a good thing too.
I think Bethesda said in their blog that most modders who ask for donations don't make anywhere near as much as they could through their monetization program, even with the measly 25% cut. I think something in the style of Patreon could help with that as well. There could be perks like early access to content updates (bug fixes should always be free), having characters, items, etc. named after them, a friend, pet or just being able to name something in general (within reason given the nature of the mod, obviously), there could be merchandise perks as well, perhaps through Bethesda's official store (in which case it would make sense for a modder to only get a small cut). To some extent it doesn't matter whether the perks are entirely worth the price, it just needs to have the feeling that you're being rewarded in some way for your contribution. Some people may be satisfied with just the feeling of having contributed to something awesome, but I think most people like to get something just a little more tangible in return-whether they want to admit it or not. It adds that little bit of extra incentive the average person needs.
As a former modder I can also say that, besides wanting to move onto my own creative projects I also wanted to move on to something I could potentially make a living off of. And I say "a living", not "make money" for what I hope are obvious reasons. I feel that if this had been allowed to continue a bit longer, with issues ironed out along the way I think the capitalistic process would've taken care of the most offensive aspects. Once the people charging for simple mods that don't add much realized they weren't earning anything, they'd stop and we'd only see worthwhile mods with worthwhile content being monetized. We may have even seen some mods still being made available free in other places like TESNexus, with Steam Workshop just being used as an option to contribute and as I said earlier there could be perks like early access to content updates (ideally those wouldn't feel too much like having to pay to beta test lol).
In conclusion, this whole thing has just been absolute madness and I simply cannot stand for them to put an end to it. Now where's my Sheogorath smilies when I need them?!

As requested in the other thread, I have deleted your previous post now. There is nobody in particular responsible for approving posts. I only happen to be the person who notices and approves them most of the time.